"When we have America's sons and daughters downrange (in combat), we are committed to giving them the best equipment, the best training and the best leadership," he said.

But he still has expenses. Langley, home of the 1st Fighter Wing, is also home of Air Combat Command headquarters, the largest command in the service. ACC manages the fighters, bombers and unmanned aircraft.

And therein lies the second front -- equipment.

Most of his airplanes are old, Keys said. F-15 and F-16 fighters, for example, date to the 1970s. The B-52 bomber first flew in the 1950s.

And "the last Air Force pilot to fly a KC-135 hasn't been born yet," Keys said of the refueling tanker managed by Air Mobility Command. "That's a sobering thought."

Few people drive 40-year-old cars, Keys said. When they do, it's on nice, sunny days.

On old planes, time spent on unscheduled maintenance is increasing. Parts are breaking in new ways, and things are taking longer to fix.

Congress requires him to keep a certain number of planes in the inventory, but Keys would like to retire some of the B-52s, noting that even the stealthy F-117 bomber is losing its relevance today.

"The F-22 is the next F-117," Keys said, referring to the Air Force's new Raptor fighters. The first deployable squadron of Raptors will be ready to deploy out of Langley in January.

But it's a pricey plane.

When each new Raptor is acquired by the Air Force, Keys pays about $133 million. Add in research and development costs, and the planes actually come in at $375 million, he said.

Originally, the Air Force wanted 381 of the new fighters. That's been scaled back to 183. Buying fewer planes means that the research and development costs are less spread out.

The answer to most of these money troubles comes in the form of work force reduction.

The Quadrennial Defense Review is a study released earlier this year of the military's ability to handle today's threats and its needs to wage tomorrow's battles. It said the Air Force needed to shed 40,000 people.

About 12,000 will come from Keys' command.

"The train wreck is coming," he said of the layoff-like efforts expected to start in October and run through October 2007. "The money is gone."

But the demand for people and machines is not.

The order to reduce occurs as Keys' airmen have been tapped to do jobs once considered Army duties.

Because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, "the Army's got itself stretched thin," Keys said.

More than 5,000 airmen from the command are in Iraq, guarding detainees, disposing of explosives and manning the gun trucks that escort supply convoys. *